The Setup
A growing wholesale brand, selling to dozens of stores. Sales were strong. Collections were not.
When it came to us, $1,090,679 was past due across 115 invoices. Most of it was recent: 86 invoices were less than 30 days late. The rest was a long tail, some of it months old.
Nobody on the team was ignoring it. They were selling. Following up on payment was one more job, and it lost to the job that pays commission.
What We Did
The brand connected QuickBooks. We loaded every open invoice, matched it to the store that owed it, and took over the follow-up.
Send every open invoice with a Pay Now link
One link per balance, in the brand's own name. No login. The store pays from its own bank.
Follow up on a steady schedule
Reminders go out on a set cadence until each invoice is paid, so no balance sits unasked.
Give every rep their list
Each sales rep gets a Monday list of who owes what on their accounts, so the person who made the sale can ask in person.
Stop the moment it's paid
When the payment lands, the reminders stop and QuickBooks is updated.
Every message went out under the brand's name. The store heard from its own vendor, the way a well-run AR department sounds, not a collection agency. That's ShelfCollect.
What Came In
$417,560 in the first 30 days. That's 38% of everything that was past due, across 52 invoices. The median payment was $4,617. The biggest was $39,684.
It started fast. $172,876 landed in the first week, the balances that only needed someone to ask.
Where the money came from
Past-due balance at the start vs. what was paid in the first 30 days, by how late the invoice was.
Almost all of it came from invoices less than 60 days late. That's the lesson: a past-due invoice is easiest to collect while it's still fresh. Every week it sits unasked, it gets harder.
What This Doesn't Prove
Paid during the first 30 days isn't the same as paid because of us. Some of these stores would have paid anyway, eventually. We can't tell you which ones, and we won't pretend to.
Nothing more than 60 days late came in during the month. Those balances are a different job: a final notice letter, a phone call, or a decision. The brand chose to write off 21 old invoices it didn't expect to see again. We review that list with every brand monthly.
The Result
$417,560 back in the brand's bank account in 30 days, and nobody on its team wrote, tracked or sent a single reminder. The sales team kept selling.
The cheapest money a brand will ever collect is the invoice that's a week late. Ask every time, on a schedule, in your own name.